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Difference between tip/tail height and rocker?

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  • Difference between tip/tail height and rocker?

    Just curious what the difference is between having high tip and tail heights vs rocker.

    Many boards billed as all-camber have high tips that seem like they would serve to help “float” the board which I thought was the purpose of rocker; to get the tips over the snow instead of digging in.

    For example, I got Spliffs this season (which in the few times I’ve ridden I was very pleased with), and was surprised to see just how little tip and tail arc there was for a board that was rockered on the ends. Comparing that to something like a DLP or my Twoowt Lions which do not have rocker but the tips are quite high, seems like they’d do well in terms of tips clearing powder.


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  • #2
    High tip/tail height allows boards to float above powder and crud, and to reduce catching on jumps and tricks involving off-axis and/or off-plane rotation, butters and landings. Rockers shorten the running length of the boards by making the front and back sections of the boards flat or have slight reverse camber. Rockered boards don't need tips and tails that are as high as fully cambered boards because the rocker brings down the center of the boards lower when neutral, thereby having a similar effect as having higher tips. The difference may not matter much on flat hardpack, but it does in powder and in the air. Rockered boards also tend to be softer, so the boards flex up more easily upon contact where the rocker starts which causes the tips to come up.

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    • #3
      Thanks for the question, and the explanation. I've been wondering the same thing myself.
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      • #4
        Okay I think I understand when it comes to full rockered boards. Unlike cambered boards which don’t really affect tip height when weighted, full rockered really forces the tips up when weighted.

        So I come back to boards that are both cambered and rockered. If the cambered section is what’s weighted then I’d think the tips would be much less affected and thus you’d need more tip rise?

        Unless what you’re saying is that the tips are stiffer on cambered generally so anything they come into contact with will plow rather than rise and rockered tips are softer and will rise above anything they run into.


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        • #5
          If I understand it right, flattening out the camber should push the rocker up when weighting the board. Since the fulcrum point (think of a seesaw) is further back on a C/R board, you'll get a pretty good lift. On a straight camber board, the distance from the contact point to the tip is pretty short, so I wouldn't expect it to push up much.
          BOARDSLAYER
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          • #6
            Originally posted by Toro View Post
            Okay I think I understand when it comes to full rockered boards. Unlike cambered boards which don’t really affect tip height when weighted, full rockered really forces the tips up when weighted. So I come back to boards that are both cambered and rockered. If the cambered section is what’s weighted then I’d think the tips would be much less affected and thus you’d need more tip rise?
            Not quite. Rockered is really reverse-camber, so if you mean 0 camber by "fully rockered" then the tips do not go up when weighted. Take a look at an XL or Raptor on a table - there is only one contact point along the length (or small continuous contact line/surface in the middle). Because the curvature starts at or near the center of the board, the tips gain a lot of height at the ends simply due to that curvature rather than from the actual shape of the tips themselves. So you need less height on the tips themselves the "more" rocker you have on the boards. One can even argue that the tips actually begin when the boards lose contact with the surface when unweighted.

            All cambered boards will force their tips up when weighted, and rockered + cambered boards have much more height gain when weighted because the pivot points are away from the tips and closer to the center. The distance between the front and back pivot points is the running length, so in general the shorter the running length, the higher the tips rise when weighted. But this depends on the camber height - given two boards with the same running length and rocker but different camber, the boards with higher camber will have higher tips when weighted.

            But there are of course other factors which you allude to...

            Unless what you’re saying is that the tips are stiffer on cambered generally so anything they come into contact with will plow rather than rise and rockered tips are softer and will rise above anything they run into.
            Board flex has a huge impact. Given two identical boards - same rocker, camber, dimensions - with different flex, the softer board will bend more easily on the front so that the front tip rises as it meets resistance upon contact but also bend more on the back to ease off on the downward pressure at the tail and tail tip. Cambered boards generally are stiffer than rockered boards, so they do need more surface area (bigger tips) against snow for the tips to rise the same amount, but they're also working against higher pressure on the back to level out your boards which works against the tips. Rockered tips aren't necessarily softer than cambered tips - it's the flex of the whole board that matters.

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